Friday, May 9, 2014

From who do we get to pick Nov. 4?

I
found it amusing to learn of the lottery held this week by the Cook County
clerk’s office to determine top ballot position for the Nov. 4 general election
to be held in Illinois.

ORR: Fodder for conspiracy theorists?

The
Democrats came out on top, meaning that for every position up for grabs, the
Democratic Party nominee will be listed. Then the Republican. Then, any
candidates of alternative political parties – assuming any are able to make it
through the political process that is heavily stacked against them.

SO
WHEN IT comes to governor, it will be Pat Quinn, followed by Bruce Rauner,
followed by whoever is able to file enough nominating petitions that even a
rigged process can’t justify jettisoning them.

Cook
County Clerk David Orr’s office felt so compelled to show they didn’t rig this
lottery that they put a video of the process out on You Tube. You can watch
it yourself – although I’m sure those amongst you who want to believe the worst
won’t believe what you see.

Just
like those people who think the moon landing was rigged, as well.

Orr’s
office says we won’t know who the third party candidates will be until some
time around August. That’s when the final ballot will be certified.

ALTHOUGH
THERE ARE those amongst us who don’t pay any attention to those names anyway.

Green
Party nominee Scott Summers? Libertarian Chad Grimm? Constitutional Party
candidate Michael Oberline (who likes to use photographs of himself in his
Marine Corps uniform to tout his political bid)?

Maybe
they’ll each get a percent of the vote. Or maybe they’ll combine to take 1
percent.

QUINN: He wins, for now

Personally,
I got to meet recently Ilona Gersh, an activist and factory worker in suburban
Dolton who says she’s running for governor on the Socialist Workers Party.

SHE
SAYS THERE’S so little difference between Democrats and Republicans when it
comes to issues that really matter that people shouldn’t think of the campaign
as Quinn versus Rauner. They ought to be looking toward the rest of the ballot.

Then
again, she talks openly of her admiration for the 1959 revolution that saw
Fidel Castro take control of Cuba and for how Malcolm X is a
seriously-misunderstood figure in our society.

Points
that could be debated, if people wanted to spend time pondering the issues.
Although I suspect most will write her off, along with the other third party
candidates. Because engaging in deep thought is headache-inducing.

RAUNER: Will he overcome Cook lottery?

Then
again, these may be some of the same people who actually do just vote for
whichever name comes out on top of the ballot for each political post. There
just doesn’t seem to be any third-party candidate as of yet who is grabbing our
attention away from Monsieurs Quinn and/or Rauner.

WHICH
MEANS THAT Cook County putting Quinn on top (along with Richard Durbin for U.S.
Senate and every other Dem for state and countywide office) may be one of those
stupid little factors that boosts the incumbent governor’s vote tally by a
percent or two.

Which
could be just enough to help him prevail overall.

Because
while some people look at the maps and see one tiny little blotch of a county
in the far northeast corner of Illinois, that county does account for about 45
percent of the state’s overall population.

And
one that can be heavily motivated to turn out the vote, compared to the mass of
small counties across the rest of the state that must combine their mass in
order to keep up with the support Cook County can give to Quinn – if it chooses
to do so.

Third party candidates for Nov. 4 are ...

WHICH
IS WHY the Rauner campaign’s strategy really seems like one meant to induce
apathy toward the upcoming activities of Nov. 4.

Get
enough people to decide it doesn’t matter (or to think like the socialist that
there’s no real difference between the two major party candidates) and not to
vote, and maybe he can just depress the vote totals enough to prevail.

I’m
not about to guess on May 9 what will happen on Nov. 4. We have nearly six full
months, and who’s to say what will crop up that will capture the hearts and
minds of the electorate.

But
wouldn’t it be the ultimate joke if one of the determining factors was a lottery
by David Orr held on the day that was Indiana’s primary election day?

I am a Chicago-area freelance writer who has reported on various political and legal beats. I wrote "Hispanic" issues columns for United Press International, observed up close the Statehouse Scene in Springfield, Ill., the Cook County Board in Chicago and municipal government in places like Calumet City, Ill., and Gary, Ind. For a time, I also wrote about agriculture. Trust me when I say the symbolic stench of partisan politics (particularly when directed against people due to their ethnicity) is far nastier than any odor that could come from a farm animal.